by east point
head room problem ? Found upper berth in SLs are tight on headroom.
Railroad Forums
Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman
bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Wed Feb 05, 2020 4:39 pm A new design could have vents up there for fresh air and an upper window would be really nice (a la the Viewliners) to make it much less claustrophobic.A bit. It's still a pretty low ceiling.
Tadman wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2020 5:41 pm Keep in mind body shell issues are not so germaine to common components. It's trucks, wheel bearings, couplers, grab irons, steps, hvac stuff, light fixtures, bed latches, bed hinges, door latches, door hinges, light switches, windows, etc... I bet lunch that it would be possible to have a single level and superliner fleet with most of those things in common. I'm not saying the Viewliner and Superliner actually do have their components in common, but they could.Agreed, and my understanding is Amtrak has actually done a fairly good job on this. The largest component I think that is not common across all the car types are trucks, and as I understand it, that makes some sense since a lot of the differences can be due to car mass and COG.
I look at it this way: there is a cost to acquire cars and maintain cars. There is also a platform limitation at many places. If you can fit 30% more passengers in any given type of car, sleeper, diner, or coach, why not do it? The savings are immense from eliminating double stops and having 30% more revenue over roughly the same amount of mechanical maintenance. That's a huge deal.
frequentflyer wrote: ↑Fri Feb 07, 2020 9:45 am There was a rumor that Amtrak is looking at the Siemens Bilevel product too, probably the Viaggio Twin, height is 15ft 2 inches above the rails. That solves your short distance, long distance commonality equipment problem.From Wikipedia GG1 specs: "Height 15 ft 0 in (4.57 m) over locked-down pantographs".
Greg Moore wrote: ↑Thu Feb 06, 2020 11:26 pmAgreed, and my understanding is Amtrak has actually done a fairly good job on this. The largest component I think that is not common across all the car types are trucks, and as I understand it, that makes some sense since a lot of the differences can be due to car mass and COG.They've even been working on that - SL2, Viewliner, horizon are all on the same trucks. We'll never see the HST on clunky american trucks, but I'd call 80% of the fleet a win.